Creative Process: Environment, Infrastructure, and Aesthetics

Before introducing renowned artist and environmental designer
Michael Singer to the crowd at Gamble Auditorium on March 2, Lauret
Savoy, director of the Center
for the Environment, took an informal survey of what students in the audience
imagined themselves to be. She quickly determined that Singer’s audience
included architects, designers, ecologists, historians, geologists, artists,
and economists; in short, the diverse blend that makes for a truly interdisciplinary
conversation. Singer, whose work has transformed public art, architecture, landscape,
and planning processes into successful models for urban and ecological revision,
was delighted to be in such company. He praised Mount Holyoke's "openness
and cross-fertilization of understanding between disciplines, between teachers
and students…. We all find ourselves gravitating to a central issue of
what is our relationship to the environment around us? How can we heal very damaged
situations? That responsibility creates a core connection. At Mount Holyoke you've
got a faculty that recognizes that their academic boundaries are permeable and
must be permeable and that they must take on these issues. That isn't happening
everywhere. You’re really in the right place."

Singer's talk, "Creative Process: Environment, Infrastructure,
and Aesthetics," was presented by the Center for the Environment
with support from the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. Fittingly,
one of the evening’s themes was the necessity of cross-disciplinary
collaborations for solving problems. Singer invited his audience
to rethink their definition of partnerships and collaboration,
noting, "None of us alone is going to have an answer that
will solve a problem but as a team we will." He repeatedly
proved that point through showing before and after images of projects
tackled in collaboration with engineers, architects, municipal
planning boards, anthropologists, scientists, and grassroots activists.
One example was the Phoenix, Arizona, recycling and transfer center
that Singer designed to invite the public’s involvement in
the process of recycling. This award-winning project was named
by the New York Times as one of the top eight design and architectural
events of 1993. Other examples included an energy-efficient New
York City power plant that doubles as a habitat for indigenous
plants and a flood wall in Grand Rapids that created a fully accessible
walkway to the river’s edge and focused residents' attention
on one of the city's natural and historic spaces.

Tracing his career's 30-year trajectory, Singer described how,
at age 25, he was chosen as one of ten young artists to exhibit
at the Guggenheim. That opportunity, he said, also offered him
the chance to make a choice. "Either I was going to continue
within that realm--which is very urban based, very much about New
York and art world dialogue thinking--or I could venture off into
environment and place and nature, an area that was more unknown
for me but seemed much more rewarding. I chose to go to Vermont
to push the boundaries of what an artist commonly does. My investigations
included exploring the intersection of the built and natural environment."

Singer emphasized that when he approaches a project, be it a garden
for an airport concourse or a supermarket in a shopping mall, he
seeks to make full use of the site's resources. Discovering the
extent of those resources results from constantly questioning "why
things are the way they are. What is an airport? What is a supermarket?" He
encouraged his audience to take a questioning mind into the world
and "think about ways we can reenvision the landscape and
the environment around us."

Singer, who had met earlier in the day with a class on the cultural
and environmental history of the Mount Holyoke campus taught by
E. Nevius Rodman Professor of History Robert Schwartz, also invited
the audience to join him the following morning for a campus walk
to discuss Mount Holyoke's landscape and resources. "We were
honored to have Michael Singer with us," Savoy said. "He
came here hoping to expand our thinking about the role of creative
people in our cultures. He not only did that, but also inspired
us to recognize the possibilities for environmental responsibility
in our work and in how we live."